Scarred
by Authors Tune
Summary: Arizona is provided with circumstances that challenge her inability to forgive.  One Shot, Mildly AU


**AN: Just a short one-shot. I was a bit bored tonight and needed something different to inspire some creativity. Sorry for any errors, as always I'm proofreading at midnight, which tends not to lend itself to an effective result!**

**Summary: **A one shot written in first person from Arizona's point of view. Somewhat AU and set somewhere around just pre-Africa. _Arizona is provided with circumstances that challenge her inability to forgive._

**Scarred**

**Part 1/1**

I get up each morning, when my alarm penetrates my consciousness. I get up without complaint and I engage with life. The shower washes away my regrets and the makeup that I carefully apply, hides my indiscretions; a mask in more ways than one. The drive to work is short, though peak hour traffic can extend my commute. I don't mind, it gives me time to practise my smile; perfect the façade. People are horrifically inept at reading non-verbal communication, too busy and too fragile themselves to really hear the incongruence. I laugh. I grin.

She watches me from across the Emergency Room, following my every move out of the corner of her eye. She too is near faultless in keeping up the pretence; carrying a conversation whilst intently observing me. She can read me. She always could and still can. How I despise her knowledge of me; the way she can hold my glare for mere moments and elicit tears.

Still. After all this time, she still holds my heart in her hands; nails painfully piercing the muscle.

It's such a small environment, the politics and the gossip. I try to avoid it because our guilt just moulds together until I can't differentiate myself anymore. She did that to me. She drew me in; completely in and made me lose the identity I had carefully crafted. I still hear though, as much as I try to duck and weave; it finds me. People are like that; they think that they can fix us. Fix me. That if they tell me how she snapped, leant over an exposed body, hands precariously holding shattered bone; then I would feel empathy. That I would feel compelled to forgive. And forget.

If I could, I would. Don't they know that?

I know that she hurts too; I'm not inhumane. It's not that I don't comprehend the complexity. I heard it. I still hear it, in my nightmares. Her tortured sobbing that pierced my eardrums and broke me into shards of splintered glass. Shattered. I did nothing; I was expressionless as I stared at her while she dissolved in front of me. I see that too; see myself helplessly watching her as if a switch went off inside of me.

I had to disengage. If I didn't, I would have disappeared.

I had never experienced her like that; though she had seen me dejected and detached. I wanted to help her. I felt compelled to whisper the words that she desperately wanted to hear. But how could I compromise myself like that? She couldn't protect me anymore; I had to shield myself. I felt so violated, so ashamed. I was lost in a world that no one could penetrate; I wouldn't allow it. Of course people tried, at first. Pulled curtains around me when I froze, trembling at just the sense of her nearby. They held my hand, pulled me into hugs. Then they fell for my charade, thankfully. I can so easily slip away if I allow myself.

My control is seemingly infallible. Yet I fear the slightest push; so close to crumbling.

The attempts at reunification failed, although to them, not to us. We were never close to that. The gap may as well have been an abyss. So they changed strategy and they ask more of me now, as if I am truly fine. As if I am ready for blind dates and strategic match making. Their attempts are futile and I wonder if they know what happens when the bars close for the evening; although I suppose I'm not naïve enough to believe they don't. The pleasant women are cast aside, whilst I bed the harsh bitches. The ones that demand little more than a rough intimacy; they never ask my name. I never offer it.

They are infrequent yet impressionable. They've become scars on my wounded core.

And she knows. I can see it clearly in the way she hesitates as she crosses my path. No one else notices my exposed ribcage, or the scratches at my neck and the slight bruise on my temple. She swallows, ingesting her guilt. The rumour mill shrouds her as well; it hurts her more to know the women I screw. To know they are the epitome of what I despise. I want her to hurt more. Subtly, when I hurt, she hurts. Because I can't bear to harm her directly.

Because I still love her. So much.

Perhaps that's why my pain isn't diminishing and why I return to the vicious cycle, oscillating between reality and trying to forget. Erase the bad memories by creating more horrific ones. I detest gentleness and niceties; her kindness falsely protected me for years. I am repulsed by tender touch now, all I feel is her fingertips on my skin as she kills me with her words. I am nauseated by care; so I withdraw further; where compassion can't reach me.

But I'm still me, deep down. My essence hasn't changed.

And then, she's standing across from me; holding a phone to her ear. She's falling backwards against the wall; tumbling to the floor, her legs folding in slow motion. I halt, pen poised mid sentence, staring at her. I look to my left; then right. Empty. There's no one else. And her cries are filling the air and I'm taken back. Back to that night; the night where I walked away. I never went back, not to collect my things, to pack up my life. I couldn't bare the thought of them; the sight would have killed me. And she's sobbing now, with the same agonised tone. There are children standing in doorways, frightened.

Doing nothing isn't an option. I can't allow a tiny human to displace me.

I walk towards her, ballpoint falling to the ground. My heart is racing; pounding in my chest. I crouch in front of her and she recoils, curling into a ball. I don't know what to do. Her phone drops out of her hand and smashes into the solid floor. A piece breaks and tumbles behind me. I can't bring myself to touch her, so I collect her phone and place it in my scrub pocket. I leave the broken part; it can't be salvaged now.

She's shaking in front of me; arms wrapped around her head, hiding.

_Callie_. The word catches in my throat and it grates through my constricted airway. I'm not sure she hears it; I'm not even sure I spoke it. It's been so long since I uttered her name. Even after, I didn't use her name. Pseudonyms and colloquial phrases, but never her name. Minutes pass and parents draw children back into rooms, closing doors. A few nurses appear, their expression shocked. I reach for her slowly; I don't want to startle her. I don't want to scare myself. She's clammy under my touch. Shuddering; shivering.

Tears burn my eyelids. Memories oxygenate my blood.

I'm not sure how to get her off the floor. I can't lift her; though she can't stay here. Her arms have lowered now, limply folded in her lap. I don't want to search her face for a dry spot; I know without looking that her cheeks are stained and wet. So I look helplessly at her shoulder, where my hands are wrapped around her bicep. She's thinner then she was. I can feel the bone compete with muscle. Her chest heaves as she gasps for air. I hear the air hiss.

I fight the association. She's not begging me for forgiveness this time.

I lean my body forward and I feel her knee press against my stomach. She feels it too and releases an unpatterned tremor. _Not here._ Her hair moves with my warm breath at her ear, it's matted to her neck. _We're going to get up now._ She starts to move as if my words struck a cord; strummed a melody that was familiar. Suddenly her hands find my forearm and she forms a vice grip. There's a door being held open for us; a nurse has found her conscience. Twenty steps that feel like a summit attempt. I'm holding her scrubs, my arms throb at the effort to keep her upright.

My heart aches at the sensation; my scarred skin feels exposed.

She's slumping to the floor again; head tilted back and body folding forward. She's completely inside of me; skin on skin, material on material. It's been so long, but I know her every sound. I have the trashcan in front of her moments before she starts retching. Only afterwards does she start talking. Her words are rushed, breathless and grossly nonsensical. But I understand. They're all dead; her family, they're all gone. I cry too, softly. They were once my family too.

I don't know how to let go. How do I release my past when it's gripping me?

She's silent now and spent, limp against my chest. I withdraw her phone and hold it in front of her. _Mark?_ She looks at me with bloodshot eyes as if I'm clinically insane. She wraps her fingers around the neck of my scrubs and she's tugging on them as if wanting to shake me into reality. Pounding lightly against my clavicle. She always tells the truth; I shouldn't have doubted that. Even when it carried agony and an inevitable end, still, she embraced honesty. Mark was no longer in her life.

She asks me to take her home and I don't know how to respond. But I do it anyway. She begs me to stay and I have no idea what is right or wrong. So I stay in the apartment that is still ours, unchanged. All the way down to the photos on the walls; plates in the basin; candles on the table. I feel home, though I hate it. I don't want to feel more complete with her. I was never as good at the truth as she was. I lie to myself every minute of every day, since that moment anyway.

The truth has always been that I can't live without her.

I give her a sleeping pill, a relaxant. And she slumbers on the sofa, fitfully and with her fingertips tapping against my back. I sit on the floor, catching little more than moments of sleep. I don't know what I'll do in the morning, whether I will stay or go. Perhaps I will wait until the funeral or after the wake. Maybe I'll stay until she sorts the Last Will and Testament. Or until she returns to work.

Maybe I'll never go, now that I'm here.

She wakes up before the sun, screaming. I soothe her, though she looks utterly confused at my presence. Until she remembers and cries again. I'm not sure what detail she's recalling but she slurs her words and tells me over and over that she loves me. I stroke her forehead until she sleeps again. When morning brings natural light, I tiptoe around the apartment, tears tumbling down my face. It's still the same as it always was.

I don't have any idea of what to do next.

So I don't make a decision; I just stay. I've walked away before and I'll do it again, if I have to. I can't shake the feeling that in the midst of this crisis, I'm lighter. My shoulders are squarer, and I feel strangely comfortable. Not lost.

If I'm not lost, I must be home.

_**Fin.**_


End file.
